Wealth by Level as a Player


Advice


Hi there!

I am pretty new to Pathfinder. I played a couple of other Pen&Paper Systems a while back (including D&D Systems) but other than that I have just taken part in a new Campaign as a Wizard.

The problem is, I get the feeling we are kind of overwhelmed by certain monsters our GM uses, in addition to us not being very well equipped.

So we turned level 5 in our last session. My current Belongings are around 1500 Gold, a Handy Haversack (worth 2k Gold), a Masterwork Longbow and some minor stuff like Rope, Bedroll - the Standard Equipment. I think I invested around 600 Gold into Spells. Additionally we paid for a Wand with Healing Spells (we don't have a cleric, i paid 800 as my part) and we travel in a Gypsy Wagon which is kind of our main transportation at the moment.

So I'd say I got around 5200 Gold of Stuff over the time, including usable items. Our Group currently has no magical weapon or armor yet (we mostly got masterwork items), allthough it is not a big deal because we are two Spellcasters.

My first Question would be - is this appropriate for the Level and is this just a basic setup to get more expensive Stuff in the next levels ?

I feel kind of underpowered (which for a mage in the early levels isn't suprising, but I feel the same for our party and their gear as well - we basically survive with our spells and a couple of great plays from our dog-riding melee ranger).

So we got this contract to get some mushrooms out of a cave, with weird plantmonsters attacking us (I think we killed 5 the first time around and another 10 the second time) with 3 attacks per round and some poison that lowers Con/Str. We ran from the cave after our GM threw some Monster in our way with DR10, Spells, huge amount of HP and at least 3 Tentacle and 2 Claw attacks.

We had to use a couple of charges of our healing wand (which amounts to about 600 Gold we used) and later had to heal the Eidolon of our Summoner from the Poison (because Eidolons don't automatically heal, it was decided that we have to use other means to get rid of the poison - else it stays on) for another 400 Gold - while getting 1500 Gold out of it (Though we did get a ton of XP from the encounter).

Next we fight some invisible evil Monster on the street that permanently Blinds our Ranger, Supriseattacks me and instantly vanishes after we make it visible with Glitterdust.

I feel kind of overpowered by the monsters our GM is throwing at us at this level. Especially with the amount of loot we got so far and the prices we are confronted with. Crafting is basically not allowed because we adventure all the time and creation of items (aside from the usual potions) would take to long and therefore can not be done in our campaign.

Am I just being paranoid/unexperienced? The other 2 players of our group have so far not raised any concerns, but their knowledge of the system and Pen&Paper in general far exceeds mine.

What can/should I do? I am constantly being bombarded with monsters that I feel are vastly superior to our group, while the loot we get mostly is some bandits belongings and/or a bigger reward after a story of our campaign comes to a close (the handy haversack was such a reward).

I'd really appreciate any Feedback. Maybe I am just unfair to our GM, but I just feel out of place - especially when he is telling me that more monsters with special abilities are coming our way ...


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I'm not sure if this is a question for the beginners box, but I think the answer will be the same anyway:

It does sound like your GM is being a bit mean with the gear/treasure. At level 5, in a regular setting, you would expect to have at least 10,000gp worth of loot (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/gamemastering.html#_table-12-4-characte r-wealth-by-level).
Also, a CR10 encounter is pretty tough for level 5, unless the GM really wanted you to run away.


Personally I feel that the Wealth By Level rules are a terrible thing to add into the game.

It sets an expectation by players. I don't use it and never will. As an adventurer how could you possibly explain that in-character? You couldn't. It's a mechanic.

"Let's go have some armor custom made."
"Sorry, I don't have enough."
"What? We've been adventuring for a year now. You should have at least 7,000 gold in addition to your other gear."

What?

You're an adventurer. Your WBL is whatever loot you find. There should not be a rule that says X adventure should yield X loot.

Your DM should add what he feels is balance. I've personally found that the WBL amounts tend to be too high for my games. You give the players this much loot/funds, next thing they're asking to visit magic shops.

Magic shops? Every now and then I'll have a vendor that has maybe 5 or so magic items, ranging from minor or medium.

I've always felt(even when I'm not DMing) as a player that the players always have the advantage. Throw the ability to buy whatever you can afford? No thanks.

Anyhow, just my 2 cents as a DM. Being an adventurer is profitable, yes. This is why brave men and women risk their lives doing it. But WBL? Get out of my game.


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Your attack bonus is a mechanic, your saves are a mechanic. We should throw them out of the window, why roll a dice when storytelling is all you need?


Mmm. Indeed, Dekalinder.


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VonZrucker wrote:

Personally I feel that the Wealth By Level rules are a terrible thing to add into the game.

It sets an expectation by players. I don't use it and never will. As an adventurer how could you possibly explain that in-character? You couldn't. It's a mechanic.

"Let's go have some armor custom made."
"Sorry, I don't have enough."
"What? We've been adventuring for a year now. You should have at least 7,000 gold in addition to your other gear."

What?

You're an adventurer. Your WBL is whatever loot you find. There should not be a rule that says X adventure should yield X loot.

Your DM should add what he feels is balance. I've personally found that the WBL amounts tend to be too high for my games. You give the players this much loot/funds, next thing they're asking to visit magic shops.

Magic shops? Every now and then I'll have a vendor that has maybe 5 or so magic items, ranging from minor or medium.

I've always felt(even when I'm not DMing) as a player that the players always have the advantage. Throw the ability to buy whatever you can afford? No thanks.

Anyhow, just my 2 cents as a DM. Being an adventurer is profitable, yes. This is why brave men and women risk their lives doing it. But WBL? Get out of my game.

The problem ofcourse is that the game disagrees with you. Wealth IS POWER in pathfinder (and its predecessor in 3.x). The game assumes a certain amount of wealth, if you have considerably less that then in usable magic items, you are not as powerful as the game expects you to be at a given level.

I for one would be glad to not have wealth by level in the game, but the game then has to change. Armor class for instance becomes quickly irrelavant if you dont have significant magical wealth. Other then a couple specific feats (Which dont work for every character), once you have your peak armor to dex ratio, your armor class absically stops going up without magic. Monster attack bonuses, do not stop going up. In fact it rises rather rapidly.

Again I agree with you and dont like the wealth by level rules, but at the same time, the game shouldnt be built with that gear as a base assumption if you arent going to use them.


I've never actually found this to be a problem. Now, this could be from my inexperience as a DM, but matching CRs to party level, the party may have it rough, but I've only had 2 TPKs my entire time as a DM.

This of course could point to party build, competent players, etc. But yeah.

I know there are far more experienced DMs out there. I didn't actually want to DM, I chose to start doing it when my DM stopped altogether.
It was either me or not at all. So, while I feel I can tell a great story, I would personally not know how to maximize say... a Lich's effectiveness in battle because I'm not completely familiar with all the intricacies of the spells, etc.

But I still stand by the "you get what you find, or bargain for" rather than WBL.

It's worked for me thus far, but I do hear where you're coming from, Kolokotroni.


Kradlum wrote:

I'm not sure if this is a question for the beginners box, but I think the answer will be the same anyway:

It does sound like your GM is being a bit mean with the gear/treasure. At level 5, in a regular setting, you would expect to have at least 10,000gp worth of loot (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/gamemastering.html#_table-12-4-characte r-wealth-by-level).
Also, a CR10 encounter is pretty tough for level 5, unless the GM really wanted you to run away.

Oh I didn't say it was a CR10 encounter. I meant the monster had Damage Resistance 10 and anything between 5 and 6 attacks with whatever knows damage behind it. It was definetly meant to be an encounter for us to run away from. It threw some Aoe magic at us that reduced all our saves by 10 and additionally wisdom by 10, put my summons to sleep and gave one of our chars negative levels. It wasn't alone either ...

I am constantly dealing with monsters that I just don't know how to handle. I think he is going the route where we need to be clever to beat something and we keep failing all the time. When I asked him about the encounters he said we get "a decent chance to survive them". His expectations seem to just be so different from mine, that I am having a hard time dealing with this. I don't know if more/better gear would even change this, but it would make the standard fights at least easier - until we get to fight the next permanent invisible, flying caster that permanently blinds our chars and vanishes without us having a chance to deal with him after we made him visible. I mean, come on - is this really an enemy a fresh level 5 party fights on an open road ...

Scarab Sages

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I think the WBL rules as a GUIDELINE are great, as a rule that must be adhered to (a la UCAM crafting rules) not so much. I think it should act as a benchmark to allow the GM to gauge what sort of magic the party should be expected to have in order to defeat monsters at their level. If you want to short the party magic, you just need to be aware you raised the effective CR of the monsters 1 level or so. This can be useful if you have a group of players that act very well in unison or are optimized and synergized.

I am concerned that some GMs want to ignore this guideline completely and still throw normal CR encounters at the party, perhaps without being aware they just upped the ante on the PCs. Also, if players are experienced, they are going to expect a certain level of wealth, just like a wizard expects to learn two new spells every time he levels. It is definitely advisable to let any players except for brand new ones know if the magic level is going to be low or high and if you are adjusting the encounters accordingly.

Or you can just go old school and lay waste to everyone with no warning, like a Rappan Athuk GM... :)


VonZrucker wrote:

I've never actually found this to be a problem. Now, this could be from my inexperience as a DM, but matching CRs to party level, the party may have it rough, but I've only had 2 TPKs my entire time as a DM.

This of course could point to party build, competent players, etc. But yeah.

I know there are far more experienced DMs out there. I didn't actually want to DM, I chose to start doing it when my DM stopped altogether.
It was either me or not at all. So, while I feel I can tell a great story, I would personally not know how to maximize say... a Lich's effectiveness in battle because I'm not completely familiar with all the intricacies of the spells, etc.

But I still stand by the "you get what you find, or bargain for" rather than WBL.

It's worked for me thus far, but I do hear where you're coming from, Kolokotroni.

When I first ran a pathfinder game I hadnt played anything since AD&D 2nd edition, and I didn't read the Pathfinder Core Rulebook very thoroughly before we began.

As it happened I had no concept of WBL. I didn't even know it was an expectation of the system.

I also didn't see the Treasure Values per Encounter table, so I never really knew what the reference was when I looked at a monsters entry in the bestiary and saw Standard or Incidental and so on listed under treasure. I figured it meant they were supposed to have something else besides the few items listed in the bestiary entry, but I never looked it up. I did what we used to do in 2e and put treasure where it made sense to me for it to be, as the story dictated.

In hindsight the treasure I gave out wasn't enough by a loooong shot, going by core assumption standards. They never came close to 1/2 WBL at any point in the campaign.

We played up to about 10th level and the group I DM'd for still remembers it as the best Pathfinder campaign we ever played. By the way, no TPK's and only 1 character death. And I never fudged a die or pulled a punch.

Now we have all visited the messageboards and learned about optimizing and WBL and everything, but we are constantly brainstorming how to get back the feeling we had that first campaign.

I've been thinking about it, and I remember I had seen the little table about appropriate CR encounters for APL, and while I didn't adhere to it very rigidly at all, I didn't object to it like the grumpy old grognard I have since realized myself to be either. I thought it was nifty that someone had done the math to help me realize what I was throwing at them.


What was that healing wand? A new bought-from-the-shop wand of CLW is only 750gp and will do 50x5.5=275 hp on average. Anything else is a waste of money.

If you're shelling out 600gp just to stay alive, your DM is being too harsh. Essentially, if you never get the chance to get ahead because a lot of your wealth is being sucked up by consumables, you'll always be weak and never match up to the encounters he's giving you.

Liberty's Edge

As others say...if you bought a non-CLW Wand for healing, you're doing it wrong. None of the others are worth it.

And to answer the original question, by the WBL table, you're at about half the recommended GP...that'll translate as -1 or -2 AC and -1 to all saves and damage, or so at this level, at least in my experience (+1 Weapon, +1 Armor, +1 Cloak, maybe another +1 AC item)...or -1 AC and a -1 Ability mod on your best stat. Not a huge difference at this level, actually...but if you don't catch up, it'll only get bigger and more problematic as you go up in level.


Mudfoot wrote:

What was that healing wand? A new bought-from-the-shop wand of CLW is only 750gp and will do 50x5.5=275 hp on average. Anything else is a waste of money.

If you're shelling out 600gp just to stay alive, your DM is being too harsh. Essentially, if you never get the chance to get ahead because a lot of your wealth is being sucked up by consumables, you'll always be weak and never match up to the encounters he's giving you.

It was a wand with 25 charges. We split the cost so it totalled to about 2500 Gold and healed 2d6+something or 3d6+something. I just calculated the charges we used to the gold cost - so we used 6 out of the 25 charges = 600 Gold. This was just in the first encounter we had in that cave. Our GM told us we should have run after that fight and not try it again (he told it stupid to keep on trying to explore the cave), which would have made us come out with even less gold then before we entered the cave.


The only time these days that I would pay much attention to WBL would be during character creation when creating characters who have more than 0 xp. That said using and paying close attention to it is different from not being aware of it. As someone above said it is a guideline. Even way back in the early 80's I had my own idea of essentially WBL in my head when planning things as DM ... by 6th level or so I would have expected most of the party to have access to a +1 weapon/armor for instance. I know roughly what my PCs have as equipment and I know what it will take to overcome the encounters I'm planning down the road (or appear in the AP or module). Do they need more or better? Then more and better will show up. Conversely if they have more than enough, the treasure might get a little light for a while or the encounters a little more demanding. Also in the back of my mind is are the Players been using their wealth as expected? If by intelligent play, conserving expendable magic etc. they've accumulated more than the expected WBL I wouldn't be looking to essentially penalize them by ramping up encounters just to eat up their wealth and bring it back down to the expected WBL. And likewise if they've spent it poorly or without thought to the consequences (such as not making sure they have the necessary tools for the encounters ahead they know of such as underwater adventures or tons of undead or golems or whatever) I'm not terribly likely to alter the adventure ahead of them. It boils down to is everyone having fun and the expected nature of the campaign (grim and gritty magic rare to over the top high magic bordering on 'silly' and everything in between). As long as they are left wanting more and having fun WBL will be the furthest thing from my mind.

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